Jasmine Birtles
Your money-making expert. Financial journalist, TV and radio personality.
Instantly Improve Your Credit Score with Experian Boost
Moneymagpie Team
24th Feb 2021
Your credit score can take a hit very easily – and then months or years to recover. That’s why Experian Boost is here – with some new ways to improve your credit score, you could see an instant boost instead of waiting months!
- What Is Experian Boost?
- Why Is My Credit Score Important?
- How to Check Your Credit Score
- Why Boost Improves Your Score Quickly
- How to Sign Up to Experian Boost
- More Ways to Boost Your Credit Score
What Is Experian Boost?
Boost rewards you for managing your money well.
All you need to do is connect your bank account to your Experian account. If you don’t already have a free Experian account, it’s really easy to set one up at experian.co.uk. Connecting your bank account is a totally secure and quick process that uses Open Banking. Experian will then instantly search for examples of how you’ve managed your money within the last year, such as paying your Council Tax on time, moving money into savings accounts and paying for digital subscriptions, like Netflix or Spotify.
You could be rewarded with a score boost of up to 66 points. Your boosted score will be instantly applied to your Experian Credit Score.
Connecting to Boost will never damage your score. If you don’t get a score boost, your Experian Credit Score will stay the same.
See if you can boost your score at experian.co.uk!
Why Is My Credit Score Important?
Your credit score is something that banks, lenders, and even mobile phone companies will assess before they decide to let you become a customer. It’s very important for things like mortgage applications – poor scores could prevent you owning property until years after they’ve improved – but even things like Paypal’s ‘three monthly instalments’ interest-free payment plan will use credit scores to assess if you’re a safe borrower.
Without a good credit score, lots of things are more difficult than you may imagine. Renting a property, for example, can also be tough if you’ve got a poor score with a history of major debt or court judgements. Even basic SIM-Only mobile contracts or internet home broadband contracts rely on your credit score as a decision-making tool.
How to Check Your Credit Score
The first thing you need to do to check your credit score is register with a credit reference agency like Experian. Banks, retailers, and credit suppliers use credit reference agencies to look into your credit score when you apply for credit.
Your score changes from month-to-month. So, it’s important to keep checking your credit report on a regular basis. When you’re registered, you can also set up alerts for hard searches on your credit report. These searches leave a mark on your report – too many of them in a short space of time can reduce your score significantly. You may also see soft searches – such as for insurance quotes – and they won’t impact your credit rating. Setting up alerts lets you know when someone has searched your credit report – and means you can spot fraud much faster if someone has used your details to access credit.
Marks on your credit score can take several months to show. Any errors also take months to resolve – and if you have any defaults or late payments, those dents in your score will take a LONG time to recover. There’s also a delay in reporting – so it might not match up exactly with your current credit card balance, for example. This is totally normal, as it takes a few weeks for credit reporting to happen. If, however, there’s something that doesn’t look right on your credit report, you can always raise a query to find out more about it, note fraudulent activity, or make a notice of correction to your account.
Why Boost Improves Your Score Quickly
Previously, your regular payments like your monthly Council Tax bill had no influence on your credit score. Experian Boost changes that. By sharing information from your current account about your regular payments, you could be rewarded with a score boost of up to 66 points.
Connecting to Boost will never damage your score. If you don’t get a score boost, your Experian Credit Score will stay the same.
How to Sign Up to Experian Boost
Experian Boost is an entirely free way to improve your credit score. All you need to do is:
- Register with Experian – it’s free!
- Connect to your bank account
- Check Boost to see if you can improve your credit score!
That’s all there is to it. Once you’re registered with Experian, you can also always check your credit report for free at any time.
More Credit Score Tips
Boost is fantastic for improving your score quickly – but there are other things you can do to increase your credit score over time. Read these articles next to find out how!
- How Does Coronavirus Affect Your Credit Score?
- 10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Credit Score
- 12 Things That Might Be Lowering Your Credit Score
- How to Clean Up Your Credit Record
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